May 21st, 2026 | Stellantis’ $70B turnaround plan; Mitsubishi's dealership exodus

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Welcome to Daily Drive.

For Thursday, May 21st, 2026,

I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.

Today on the show, Stalantis will launch

nine new models under 40 grand.

Nissan is looking to import Chinese-made vehicles

to Canada, and Volkswagen pushes back

on Chinese partnership rumors.

Plus, Mitsubishi has cut 56 dealerships since 2019.

We'll talk about what's driving the shrinking network.

The used car sales are really what these

Mitsubishi dealers can sell anymore.

Basically, they've become used car stores.

Let's run through all the news you need to know

to keep up in the auto industry.

Stalantis is trying to win back buyers with a promise.

Nine new vehicles under $40,000 in North America

by the end of the decade.

Two of those will even come under 30 grand.

The automakers betting big on its household names.

Jeep, Ram, Peugeot, Fiat, and its commercial division

are getting 70% of a $70 billion global investment pot.

CEO Antonio Filosa says the strategy

is about making those investments count.

This replaced where we see the strongest combination

of market opportunity, brand strength, and attractive retail.

The plan which Stalantis is calling, Fastlane 2030,

includes 11 all-new vehicles for North America.

The company's aiming to grow regional volume by 35%

while hitting operating margins of eight to 10%.

We'll have more on this and other news

from Stalantis Investor Day in a minute.

Nissan is exploring the possibility of importing

at least 3,000 to 4,000 vehicles a year

from China to Canada.

The math is pretty straightforward.

Canada is allowing 49,000 China-made EVs this year

at a 6% tariff, while US-built Nissan's

face a 25% tariff to enter Canada.

That's according to Nissan America's chairman,

Christian Mounier.

The automaker wants to tap excess capacity

at its Dongfeng joint venture

and is eyeing low-cost vehicles for Canadian buyers,

including an entry-level EV for Quebec's

strong electric vehicle market.

And Volkswagen is not in talks with Chinese companies

to deal with overcapacity at its European plants.

That's according to CEO Oliver Bloom,

who is pushing back on speculation

that the automaker might partner with Chinese brands.

He told workers there are no talks happening right now,

though he did acknowledge VW has excess capacity

that needs addressing.

The company has cut 50,000 jobs in Germany

over three years of belt tightening.

And Bloom warned that VW's old playbook,

exporting cars from Germany to the world,

is being replaced by a need to build locally

in key markets like China.

And those are today's headlines.

You can find more details on all those stories

at AutoNews.com.

Joining me now to talk more about the news so far

as of recording time from Stellantis' investor day

is Nick Bunkley, director of automaker coverage

at Automotive News.

Nick, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Thanks for having me.

All right, Nick, so nine vehicles under 40 grand by 2030.

Now, how does Stellantis plan to pull this off

while also making money?

Well, that's kind of the thing to watch here, right?

Because we've been hearing more and more talk about

needing more affordable vehicles

as prices have gone up.

And Stellantis, like a lot of automakers out there,

has followed that trend

because the more they can have people pay,

the more they make on these vehicles.

And they all obviously wanna make the most money they can.

But now with affordability becoming such a big concern,

they feel that they need to have more vehicles

in those lower ranges again.

And to do that, they're just gonna have to

basically share platforms, share parts,

use their global scale that they created with this merger

from a couple of years ago

to basically make it less expensive

to make these vehicles than it used to be.

Now, Stellantis is putting a lot of eggs in four baskets,

Ram, Jeep, Peugeot, and Fiat.

What does this mean for the other 10 brands?

Well, so what they've said so far

is essentially that they're keeping everything.

They've got this whole kind of unwieldy looking roster

of 14 brands that they ended up with

after the 2021 merger.

They're focusing on these four brands,

Jeep and Ram being the two at the center

of their plan in the U.S.

But the other brands, they're not going away,

they're just kind of becoming a little more off to the side,

just not the major pieces, which they haven't been all along.

So it's kind of continuing the strategy,

but just sort of more formalizing where the big sales are

is where the investment is going to be.

Now, finally, anything else you've seen

or watching for during Stellantis' investor day?

Well, with those brands, the four brands in the U.S.,

Jeep, Dodge, Ram and Chrysler,

it is interesting to see how they plan to move those forward.

They're expecting all four to notch

some fairly sizable sales gains over the next five years.

They're looking to add like 500,000 sales

in North America between the four of those.

And Ram in particular is the one

where they expect the most growth.

They're looking for Ram to gain 60% in sales by 2030,

which would make that the biggest brand here

rather than Jeep, which is the biggest one now.

So they have some pretty ambitious product plans for Ram.

They've talked about a compact pickup,

which was new to us today,

midsize that we knew was coming,

but they talked more about that.

They have an SUV coming for Ram.

So it's interesting to see there's been a lot of focus

on Jeep over the last few years,

but Ram is sort of the big story here.

All right, Nick Bunkley, thank you so much for joining me.

All right, thank you.

Coming up, our own Irvash Karkaria joins the show

to talk about why Mitsubishi's dealer network is dwindling.

That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive, I'm Kellan Walker.

Yesterday on the show,

we reported that Mitsubishi has cut

56 dealerships since 2019,

shedding 16% of its US network.

CEO Mark Chaffin told our own Irvash Kakaria

that the company terminated about 35 franchises

in the past 18 months alone.

Nearly 60% of Mitsubishi's first quarter sales

went to fleet buyers.

Our own Jake Nier talked about it

with our own Irvash Kakaria,

Atlanta bureau chief for us at Automotive News.

Irvash, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Hi Jake, great to be back.

So what are dealers telling you

about why Mitsubishi's fleet strategy

is causing so much friction at the retail level?

Yeah, for sure.

So, Mitsubishi, like many brands,

many of these smaller brands, mass market brands,

heavily rely on fleets to achieve the volume that they need.

In the case of Mitsubishi,

according to some internal Q1 data that we looked at,

nearly 60% of the vehicles that they sold

in the first quarter of this year went to fleets,

primarily rental fleets.

And this is a big problem for two reasons.

One is Mitsubishi has direct relationships

with the rental fleet companies

and strikes deals with them to take cars,

often beating their own dealers

in terms of what the dealers can offer those cars for.

So it's really taking away from the dealerships,

it's taking business away from the dealerships.

The other thing is this heavy reliance on fleet

is also affecting residual values.

And that, again, is affecting new car retail sales.

And here's how it works.

The more rental fleet sales they have,

then there's this huge supply of lightly used,

relatively lightly used used cars.

And then the used cars, prices take a dive,

which then widens the gap between the new car prices

and the used car prices,

so that the customer is basically swayed

to buy a one to two year Mitsubishi car

instead of buying the new brand.

So it hurts the dealers both immediately

when they lose the new car sales to the rental companies,

but then on the back end,

when they can't sell new cars

because the used Mitsubishi are cannibalizing sales.

So I looked at some Edmunds data

and essentially Mitsubishi has some of the lowest

real residual values in the industry

with one year old vehicles retaining just about 69%

of their original sticker price.

And like I said, that kind of creates a situation

where the used car sales

are really what these Mitsubishi dealers can sell anymore.

Used cars are basically, they've become used cars stores.

I talked to several Mitsubishi dealers

and they all said the same thing.

And one retailer said that,

he sells 10 new vehicles a month

and more than 90 used vehicles

versus 90 used vehicles to stay profitable.

So essentially, these Mitsubishi stores

are really used car businesses with the Mitsubishi logo.

That's interesting.

And is that what seems to be the driving force behind

this sort of, is Exodus the right word of dealers?

Yeah, I mean, you know, they've lost what, 56 dealers

about 17%, dealerships are about 17%

or 16% of the network since before the pandemic.

Now, some of this is Mitsubishi also trying

to get rid of the low performers.

And the CEO has told us Mitsubishi Motors North America CEO

said that they've got about 30 new dealerships in the pipeline

and that these new stores would, they say,

they expect to have, you know,

whatever three to five times the volume

of those that have left.

So definitely the pressure on the new car business

is affecting these dealers and frustrating them.

But I think the fundamental problem Mitsubishi has

is that they just do not have competitive products

on the market.

They've essentially got three models,

one of which the Outlander Sport is on a 15 year platform,

Eclipse Cross, I believe is about eight years old.

And then the Outlander,

which is their best seller is relatively new

with a four to five redesigned about four to five years ago.

And you know, Mitsubishi has said and has told dealers

that we have all this new product coming up,

including a electrified three row crossover,

a passenger van, they've said that.

But then again, they haven't really provided to dealers

or to us, to me, when I questioned Chaffin,

I was like, when are these cars going to come?

And they just, you know, either they don't provide it

or they are not sure, you know,

if they'll meet their timeline.

But essentially Mitsubishi said that they want to

essentially launch four new cars, four new models

between last year through the end of the decade.

They are getting an EV, basically a rebadged Nissan Leaf.

It's questionable, you know, who's going to buy that

at this, you know, in this stage of the market.

But that's coming out in the summer.

But then again, they have some, you know,

variants of existing models like a two wheel drive,

you know, Outlander sport and some other models

to basically lower the starting price.

You mentioned Nissan and Alliance partner with Mitsubishi.

We'll talk a little bit more about their news

in a second today.

But I am curious, Nissan also sort of went through

or has gone through similar issues in the past.

How have they approached it?

And is there any sort of kind of crossover

for how Mitsubishi could think about this issue?

Absolutely.

I mean, Nissan appears to be in some kind of a revival,

a business revival in the US, you know,

after struggling for the past, you know,

56 years again with the dated lineup,

finally the new product is coming to market.

And that's, you know, obviously helping with sales.

They had the, I believe the 14th consecutive month

of retail sales growth in April.

So yeah, they've got their new product

that's starting to essentially deliver results

at the retail level.

Mitsubishi obviously is a smaller company in the US.

They don't have the breadth of the lineup that Nissan does.

So in a way, they are more challenged.

But for sure, you know, Mitsubishi should take a page

out of Nissan's book, like the new Nissan America's

leadership led by Christian Bonnier.

I mean, not only are they bringing new product,

but they've gotten very aggressive

about essentially pushing their US made cars,

US built cars, which also happened to be their crossovers,

their popular crossovers.

And so that's helping them, you know, offset the tariff.

Now, in the case of Mitsubishi, they don't make any cars here.

There was some talk about them potentially building up,

bringing out this mid-sized crossover,

which would either be based on the Pathfinder,

the next generation Pathfinder or the XTERRA,

and it will be built by Nissan.

But again, I have heard nothing from Mitsubishi

or from my insiders at Nissan

that any such project is in the works.

So, you know, there are different beasts,

but I think Mitsubishi should or can learn

from Nissan's revival.

Now, it remains to be seen how sustained Nissan's revival is,

where in the early innings,

maybe in a year from now if the momentum continues,

that's one thing, but that remains to be seen.

Now, the news that you covered from Nissan today

is interesting.

We talked about this at the top of the show today.

Nissan is thinking about importing thousands of vehicles

a year from China to Canada.

Why is Canada the target?

Why is it suddenly a more attractive market

for Chinese made Nissan's than the US?

Sure, so it's kind of an opportunistic play.

I talked to Christian Monier,

the Nissan America's chairman yesterday,

and he kind of hinted that, you know,

again, it was like they were taking advantage

of Canada's decision to allow Chinese EVs to be imported.

Sort of the play is that it's hard for a Nissan

or any automaker to export their US-made cars

to Canada because there's a 25% reciprocal tariff

on those cars.

Canada, with China, they've kind of reached an agreement

where Chinese-made cars can be imported into Canada

up to 49,000 units this year.

It increases slightly every year after that.

And more importantly, the tariff is only 6.1%

versus the 25% tariff that US-made vehicles face.

So for Nissan and maybe some other automakers,

this is a good way to absorb the excess production capacity

that Nissan has in China.

They have a joint venture with Dongfang.

So it's a way to absorb excess capacity

while also shipping Chinese-made cars to Canada

is more profitable than shipping US-made cars

just because of the cost of production.

So a couple of things.

A, it absorbs excess capacity in China.

It leads to incremental sales for Nissan in North America.

And it also, more importantly,

all those sales are also more profitable

because it's coming from a low-cost country.

So is there a risk here though?

I mean, Nissan is taking these unfamiliar Chinese models

into a new market, into Canada.

Is that a risk for the automaker?

Absolutely.

So there are some business risks

and then there are some geopolitical risks.

On the business risk side,

Nissan will have to bring these Chinese vehicles

up to Canadian safety standards.

So there is some investment there.

Emissions is less of an issue because these are EVs.

The other thing that they have to, as you mentioned,

have to consider is that these are unknown vehicles,

unknown models to the Canadian audience.

So there's gonna be some marketing investment.

Now granted, the volumes are relatively low.

They've said that they are looking to import

at least three to 4,000 vehicles

to justify the investment that they would need to make

in marketing and safety standards.

And again, when you told me that they're very early

in the process, they're still investigating it.

So by no means is this a done deal.

The other concern that Nissan has also

is by importing these Chinese made vehicles into Canada,

it could annoy the Trump administration

and US lawmakers that for several reasons

are very against EVs, Chinese made EVs entering the US.

Now granted, this is in Canada,

but still there's also some general concern

that could Canada's decision to allow

these Chinese imports also complicate the USMC

and negotiations that the US is having with Canada

and Mexico, though I believe that the Canadian officials

have said at least publicly

that they don't expect it to have any effect.

Sometimes what they say is not

what's actually happening behind the scenes you never know,

but Urvax Carcaria, I really appreciate you joining us

to talk about these stories and keep them coming.

My pleasure, thanks for having me.

That's Daily Drive for today, I'm Kellan Walker.

Thanks to automotive news reporters, Vince Bond Jr.

and Nick Bunkley for their reporting for today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on Stellantis' Investor Day,

Mitsubishi's dealer network and everything happening

in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.

Come back tomorrow for a look at how service centers

are dealing with a new shortage of engine oil

due to the Iran War.

75% of our additives for all synthetic vehicles

oils and components is made either in the Middle East

or Korea, so it's here and there's a shortage

and there's a problem.

We'd love to hear from you, let us know what you think

of the show and the topics we covered today.

Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com

or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.

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Thank you.

May 21st, 2026 | Stellantis’ $70B turnaround plan; Mitsubishi's dealership exodus

About this episode

Dodge Ram

Jeep

dealer fraud

Experian Automotive

residual values

fleet sales

cannibalizing sales

Edmunds

platform

Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross

Mitsubishi Outlander

electrified three row crossover

Nissan Leaf

offset the tariff

Nissan Pathfinder

Nissan XTerra

reciprocal tariff

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